Izzy
Senior Insider
Iceland has a similar per capita hospital beds as the US and about half that of France. The tertiary care hospitals of Iceland are in Reykjavik (capital and population center) and Akureyri,. Each of the other 5 "health regions" have regional general service hospitals. As with St Barth, Iceland uses "air ambulances" for transport as needed (of course, the rural areas of Iceland are not populous and do not have a supply of villas to attract St Barth level tourism...).
For St-Barth, how the regional vs. the island hospital bed capacity is factored in to decisions by the prefecture, central government, and ARS will be interesting to see.
I believe that even if regional capacity is used, the lack of resuscitative capabilities on island would still need to factored in as a major limitation. COVID patients of all age groups who deteriorate to a level requiring ventilatory support tend to do so precipitously (mainly in week 2) and reliable early predictors of those at risk for this demise have not yet been discovered. So although on island capacity for isolating and monitoring cases (stated as 1-3 with current configuration) might be further expanded to all, and even beyond, the island's hospital beds (listed as 20 here), the capability to care for COVID patients on island would be questionable. There are, of course, ways to enhance resuscitative capabilities on island but that's another discussion...
All that being said, I think that since St Barth needs to prepare for the eventual return of tourists, be they from mainland France (with PM Philippe now stating "the French will be able to go on vacation to France in July and August. And when I say in France, it's obviously in France and overseas"), the EU or the US before a vaccine or real treatment comes on line (early 2021 is a highly aggressive goal), the island can benefit from seeing Iceland's upcoming experience in quarantining and tracking tourists despite significant differences between the two locations.
BTW, one thing that I have noticed at my home bunker in a location that about triples its population in summer (an adjacent town increases population about twentyfold during peak weeks) is that tourists who have found a way to visit now tend to have a "what pandemic?" mindset... they are still thankfully few but calls of "ready or not, here we come" are sounding less distant with each passing day... may be time to plan on heading to the Reykjanes and playing some Buffett while in quarantine...
For St-Barth, how the regional vs. the island hospital bed capacity is factored in to decisions by the prefecture, central government, and ARS will be interesting to see.
I believe that even if regional capacity is used, the lack of resuscitative capabilities on island would still need to factored in as a major limitation. COVID patients of all age groups who deteriorate to a level requiring ventilatory support tend to do so precipitously (mainly in week 2) and reliable early predictors of those at risk for this demise have not yet been discovered. So although on island capacity for isolating and monitoring cases (stated as 1-3 with current configuration) might be further expanded to all, and even beyond, the island's hospital beds (listed as 20 here), the capability to care for COVID patients on island would be questionable. There are, of course, ways to enhance resuscitative capabilities on island but that's another discussion...
All that being said, I think that since St Barth needs to prepare for the eventual return of tourists, be they from mainland France (with PM Philippe now stating "the French will be able to go on vacation to France in July and August. And when I say in France, it's obviously in France and overseas"), the EU or the US before a vaccine or real treatment comes on line (early 2021 is a highly aggressive goal), the island can benefit from seeing Iceland's upcoming experience in quarantining and tracking tourists despite significant differences between the two locations.
BTW, one thing that I have noticed at my home bunker in a location that about triples its population in summer (an adjacent town increases population about twentyfold during peak weeks) is that tourists who have found a way to visit now tend to have a "what pandemic?" mindset... they are still thankfully few but calls of "ready or not, here we come" are sounding less distant with each passing day... may be time to plan on heading to the Reykjanes and playing some Buffett while in quarantine...